History Threads — That’s a lot of cloth

Picture a piece of fabric stretching from Lake George Village to Ticonderoga.

That’s about the equivalent of cloth that was being used to make shirts, collars and cuffs at Glens Falls garment factories.

“The weekly product of the linen goods manufacturers of Glen’s Falls amount to from 11,000 to 12,000 shirts and 75,000 to 80,000 collars and cuffs, the whole consuming over 57,000 yards of cloth, something over 32 miles — a strip nearly as long as Lake George — and furnishing employment to over 2,500 people,” the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette reported on Sept. 18, 1879.

In other 19th century garment industry news collected from historic newspapers of the region:

1879

• “Friday the Glens Falls Shirt Company received the medal of the American Institute for excellence of its manufacturing,” The Commercial Advertiser of Sandy Hill reported on Dec. 10.
• “The Fort Edward Shirt Co., although but recently organized, is doing quite a business and working behind orders all the time. They are running fourteen machines in the Harris place, and have in their employ 25 persons, not counting those who take work to their homes to do,” The Commercial Advertiser reported on Nov. 26.

1880

• “The three factories in this village are of about equal capacity, and can turn out about 1,800 dozen shirts per week, or more than a million per year,” The Glen’s Falls Republican reported on Dec. 28, 1880.

1881

• “The Glen Street Shirt Company is putting in a new engine of forty horsepower, which will double their manufacturing facilities,” the Glen’s Falls Messenger reported on Nov. 18, 1881. “We are glad to see this reliable firm giving such evidence of increasing business and assured prosperity.”

1891

• “The shirt shop shut down last Monday. The girls were tired of working for love,” the Salem correspondent reported in The Granville Sentinel on Sept. 11. “The proprietors evidently thought they were not worthy of their hire and owned them about $2,000 (the equivalent of $69,818 in 2025 dollars) when they stopped working. The girls and the public think differently, and something likely will be done in a few days to lighten their loss.”

1894

• “All of the shirt and collar manufacturers are doing a thriving business, and operators are correspondingly happy. Joseph Fowler & Co. are compelled to run their collar department extra time in the evening. The Glens Falls Shirt Company operates their Sandy Hill branch until eight o’clock each evening,” The Morning Star reported on Dec. 20. “This is a good condition and is more effective than any other means for settling the much-discussed poor question.”

1895

• “The shirt factory is overrun with work. More hands are called for at once,” the Shushan correspondent reported in The Granville Sentinel on Feb. 1.

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